Customers of UK ISP Pipex (Tiscali) have been hit by email connectivity woes for several days after a major platform upgrade encountered problems. The work being performed was part of the providers new billing and account management system (here), which is due to be completed by 30th November 2008.

It's understood that this work included several enhancements, not least the installation of free anti-virus and anti-spam services on customer email accounts using the IronPort X-Series™ and IronPort Anti-Spam™. Sadly some unforeseen compatibility problems got in the way:


The upgrade itself appears to have affected the format of email addresses stored by Pipex's system. Customers have been advised to replace the % sign with an @ sign when logging on to mail. For example, those currently using - username%dsl.pipex.com or username%dial.pipex.com need to replace it with - username@dsl.pipex.com or username@dial.pipex.com. More @ The Register.